Push-through containers are produced with the help of thermal forming machines, in which at first depressions are created by deforming a heated sheet of foil for the purpose of containing tablets or similar objects. After having been filled, the depressions are closed by sealing a cover foil to the sheet of foil having the depressions. Next, the push-through containers are heat stamped and perforated. This perforation makes it possible to take one part of the container, containing one tablet, and to separate it from the entire push-through container. After these processes, the foil sheet passes through a punching station, where the desired sizes of packages are punched out. The push-through containers thus made are generally brought to a packaging machine which packages them singly or in batches in folding boxes.
For some time now the desire has been expressed, especially on the part of hospitals, to equip the push-through containers additionally with stickers in such a way, that every part of the container separated from the whole and containing one tablet or the like carries a sticker. The reason for this can be seen especially in the desire for certainty of control over the dispensed medication. Before the respective tablet container is given to the patient, the nurse removes the sticker from the container and pastes it into a card file. This method makes it possible to ascertain at any future moment the time and amount of medication dispensed. Furthermore, errors in writing or transferring information possible in the past are avoided with certainty by transferring the stickers from the push-through container to the card file. Another advantage, especially in respect to child-proofing the container, arises from the use of the pasted-on sticker, since the tablet can only be pushed out through the cover foil after removal of the sticker.
However, there are some difficulties in affixing the stickers to the cover foil of push-through containers. The stickers cannot be affixed before the perforation of the push-through containers and then be perforated together with them, since in this case the gummed layer of the stickers would adhere to the perforating cutters. To equip each and every part of a push-through container with a sticker, so that no perforation of the stickers is necessary, cannot be considered as a solution to the problem for reasons of efficiency.
A method for the affixing of stickers would be advantageous in which no residue would adhere to the perforating cutters but in which the demand to equip each single push-through container with a separately removable sticker could be satisfied, in which case an efficient affixing of the stickers by machine would be a prerequisite.